Chapter 14 #3
The NGO wasn’t the end. It was a waypoint.
And wherever Lina was sent next—someone wanted to keep her hidden.
The question is whether it’s for her protection, or for theirs.
She’s the only witness who didn’t take a payout or disappear voluntarily.
If someone silences her, whatever Safe Passage was building toward dies with her testimony.
She trusted me enough to stay. I don’t get to stop believing that mattered.
When I first started this job, I would’ve believed all actions were done in the interest of the witness.
I believed in our system, that those working on the government payroll did so to ensure a just society.
But somewhere along the way, I lost my rose-colored glasses.
We walk for several blocks in silence, crossing two bridges and passing three trams before either of us speaks.
My mind is still in that NGO office—the young man’s nervous energy, the receptionist’s perfect stonewalling, the forty-eight-hour window.
Expedited transfer is unusual protocol. Unusually fast payment. Everything about this case is unusual.
The rhythm of Geneva settles back in around us—tram bells, low conversations in three languages, the faint rush of the Rh?ne somewhere to our left. Clean. Orderly. And utterly unhelpful.
It’s Gabe who breaks the silence. “Evie.”
He’s stopped just short of a pedestrian crossing, phone in his hand, attention split between the screen and the street.
“Quinn just pinged me,” he says. “Financial noise.”
“What kind of noise?” I ask, moving closer to see his screen. My muscles tense with anticipation. And hope. This is the break we need. It has to be.
“One transaction that didn’t fully anonymize.” He tilts the phone so I can see. “Small, but specific. Logistics-related. Housing and security services, bundled together.”
“That’s not unusual for NGOs,” I say automatically, thinking through it. “They consolidate expenses.”
“True,” he agrees. “But this one cleared through a regional Swiss provider. Not Geneva. Not Basel. Not Zurich.”
“Where?”
He taps the screen, pulling up additional detail. A canton name appears—one I recognize but wouldn’t have ever expected.
Not urban. Not international-facing. Not where you’d typically relocate a high-value witness.
“When did this clear?”
“Early,” he says. “Shortly after the second transfer. Same time window the NGO admin mentioned—that forty-eight-hour expedited move.”
I stare at the screen, then lift my gaze to the street around us, suddenly seeing Geneva differently. Not as an end. As a distraction.
“They didn’t keep her here,” I say slowly. “They washed her through Geneva, then pushed her somewhere quieter. Smaller. Less oversight.”
“Rural.”
“Or semi-rural,” I say. “It makes sense. Private housing. Discretion baked into the culture.”
My mind starts layering patterns—cases I’ve worked, victims who vanished into places that weren’t meant to be destinations at all.
“Trafficking suppression follows money, not geography,” I add, looking back at his phone, thinking about that address. “You don’t hide people where attention pools. You hide them where no one thinks to look.”
Gabe nods once. He isn’t trying to finish the thought for me.
“And NGOs,” I continue, excitement creeping into my voice now, “are perfect cover—not because they’re complicit, most of them have no idea. They move people fast. They don’t always verify downstream custody. And once a witness is ‘safe,’ everyone stops asking questions.”
He watches me, expression unreadable but steady. After a beat, he says, “If you wanted to isolate someone, a smaller canton makes tactical sense. Limited law enforcement presence. Easier to monitor who’s asking questions. Harder for outside agencies to coordinate access.”
“And if she’s in private housing instead of institutional placement—”
“No visitor logs,” he finishes. “No records. No bureaucratic paper trail beyond that one financial transaction.”
Watching him think is oddly steadying—the way his mind moves in straight lines while mine spirals. Different tools. Same target. Useful—for tracking down Lina.
“This has never been about protecting Lina,” I say, the suspicion solidifying into certainty.
“It’s about breaking the trail so completely that reopening the case becomes impossible.
Make her vanish so thoroughly that even if someone tries to find her, they’re chasing ghosts in Geneva while she’s somewhere no one’s looking. ”
And the best part of this—if they think she can’t be found, she might actually be safe—maybe. But the opposite is also true.
A tram slides past, bell chiming. Pedestrians with shopping bags flow around us on the sidewalk, oblivious. The normalcy of it all suddenly feels obscene.
“So we don’t hunt in Geneva,” he says.
“No,” I concur, pulling out my own phone to search for train schedules. “We go where the money actually landed.”
Gabe pockets his phone, still focused, filled with purpose. “That’s where we go.”
And for the first time since I walked away from the DOJ—the trail doesn’t feel cold. It feels close.
We’re close.
Lina was here. Someone moved her. Lucky for us, they left an accidental trace.
We just have to follow it before the trail gets scrubbed—or she’s moved again.